


a warrior's heart

by bea_meupscotty



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Merlin (TV)
Genre: Crack Crossover, Crossover, Multi, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:55:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24736519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bea_meupscotty/pseuds/bea_meupscotty
Summary: Bran Stark is the one to break the silence.“Tell them, Emrys.”***Morgana's visions lead them to a Winterfell poised to fight the Night King's army.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth, Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> is this a super crack asoiaf/merlin crossover? yes. is the plot mostly a strained device for my character-study loving ass to write intense conversations between characters i see parallels between? yes. am i going on three months of sheltering in place in my tiny apartment and therefore entitled to write whatever crack i want? also yes. 
> 
> i'm following show!canon for GoT, up to the beginning of s8-ish, and in terms of merlin canon it's a little muddled but is roughly after season 2, with some tweaks to Morgana's timeline. 
> 
> i have no apologies or explanations, but i hope this brings someone even a little bit of joy or entertainment during difficult times.

Snow. 

Snow falling all around. Through the darkness of a night. Heavy, thick. Snow. Darkness. 

It’s as if she’s looking down from a tall height, and for leagues ahead, shambling figures lurching closer. With a certainty, she knows they are dead, walking dead, reanimated by an icy presence she can feel in the vision more than she can see. 

The vision blurs, turns. Herself on the walls of a great castle, broadsword in hand, screaming something at Gwen. Fire dances behind them. Another blur, and Merlin is standing at the tallest tower, gold flashing in his eyes. Arthur struggling up stairs, shouting Merlin’s name. 

Words she doesn’t understand, harsh and roiling with power. 

Swords clashing, a tall blonde warrior she mistakes for a man at first, holding the dead at bay with great strokes a gleaming sword with a golden hilt. Beside her, a man with a golden hand. One of the creatures breaks through, its sword inches from her back, when he pivots and kills it. 

A dark-haired man lying in the snow, gasping for breath.

A pale woman, face contorted in anger.

The roar of a dragon. 

Morgana sits up in bed, for once not screaming, just gasping for breath. In the back of her mind, the vision still roils, clear and calling. She doesn’t feel fully awake, nor fully asleep, as she follows the images in her mind. She dresses, mechanically, packs, mechanically, fetches Gwen, mechanically, then Arthur, then Merlin, speaking the words the vision tells her she needs to to bring them, leading them on a long ride through the night, into the mists of the Valley of the Fallen Kings, off any trail any of them have ever known. 

She leads them until they walk through a narrow pass, twisting and turning, and emerge into a frozen forest, and the vision stops. 

It’s snowing here.


	2. Brienne I

It’s a bright, clear morning. The air is crisp, but not biting. The early morning sun is just beginning to burn away the clouds that had hung low over Winterfell the evening before and the fog that had descended in the godswood, wreathing the already eerie trees in shifting shades of grey. The Lady Sansa had desired a walk through the godswood in the early morning, and Brienne had desired to accompany her, as much to continue to protect her in a Winterfell suddenly full of the Dragon Queen’s presence and her strange retinue as for some quiet to think on the strange events of the past few days. Jaime Lannister’s arrival at Winterfell, alone, no Lannister armies at his back, and the subsequent effort needed to convince the Dragon Queen not to kill him for his crimes, had given her much to think about. She hadn’t thought he’d return, not truly, not ever. She had thought her lost to him after Riverrun, and counted herself lucky if she’d just never have to see him across her on the battlefield. Now? There’s a pressure in her chest that she refuses to name or acknowledge, somewhere between warmth and pain. It reminds her of the warm swelling of an infection after a wound—something you know spells trouble, even if you can’t call it a hurt. His return to sister, over and over again, at her side even after the destruction of the Sept of Baelor, the death of the last of their children, had been a knife—not in the back, because he had never lied to her about that, about who he really was at heart, his devotion to his sister—but a knife nonetheless. And the warmth and the swelling in her chest at seeing him, defying his sister to come fight for the living, feels like hope or healing but she knows it’s just infection. Standing up for him, telling them of his honor, was the right thing, but she’s not stupid enough to believe in hope. She knows she’s become morose when she should be focusing on preparations and fighting, but luckily, the Lady Sansa seems as much in need of quiet contemplation as Brienne. 

They’re nearing the heart of the godswood when Brienne hears the tramping of horses and the unmistakeable metallic clanking of armor and sword. She tenses, almost glad for the distraction. Emotions, hopes, fears, Jaime Lannister—that way lies nothing but confusion and uncertainty. This, swords and armor? It’s simple, easy. She’s never felt as certain as she does with a sword in her hand and someone to protect. The Lady Sansa must hear it as well, because she halts, looking to Brienne, who unsheathes her sword and steps forward. Inching towards the sound, she’s taken aback by the sight of four riders, stumbling from a denser patch of foliage, looking for all the world as if they have slept in their saddles. Two men and two women. The two in the back look like smallfolk, carrying neither swords nor armor, shivering in tunics and cloaks too thin for the frigid north—one man, tall on his horse but thin and gangly, with messy hair and protruding ears, one woman, dark-skinned like she’s from the East, but with a strong set to her jaw and a beautiful face. The two in front are harder to look at. There’s a woman who looks noble, despite the exhaustion that weighs heavily on her face, and beautiful—the kind of beauty Brienne once dreamed of having, not a delicate beauty but a strong beauty, with regal features and a strength of presence. The man seems the threat, the one wearing mail and sword, but he is young and strong and golden, and she imagines he could half be a Lannister. She looks away from his face and focuses instead on the sword at his side. 

“Who are you? Announce yourselves,” she hears Sansa demand from behind her, voice clear and regal and with a hint of that unbroken steel that Brienne remembers from Catelyn Stark. 

The foursome look at each other, hesitant, before the blonde man in the front, the one with the clinking mail, turns and clears his throat. “Apologies if we’ve startled you, my lady. Ladies,” he hastily corrects, with a sharper glance at Brienne and a cough from the gangly man. Brienne doesn’t blink. It wouldn’t be the first time she had been mistaken for a man, and the golden man—this golden man, unlike Jaime Lannister—didn’t seem to mean offense by it, merely mistake. “We are… travelers, who lost our way in the forest.” 

Brienne exchanges a glance with Sansa, who can’t keep the hint of amusement from her face in spite of the wariness there. It almost brings a smile to Brienne’s face—not the farce of a story, but the amusement in Lady Sansa’s eyes. She’d thought that she’d been too late, that she might have saved Sansa’s life but only after Sansa had lost everything that had made her the daughter Catelyn Stark loved. But the shared look, even with the danger, makes it feel as if they are years younger, nothing more than friends sharing a joke. Brienne turns her eyes back to the group before them, giving them a more naked appraisal now. The Night King needs no living spies, and if these are Queen Cersei’s, they’re more terrible than any spies either woman has seen yet. Qyburn must make a very poor master of whispers indeed, if his agents think to spin a story that they stumbled their way into Winterfell. No matter, because Brienne, for her part, sees the amusement but remains focused on the threat. From the way the blonde man sits on his horse, the ease with which he wears his armor and keeps his resting gaze not on her sword but on her feet, he has at least some of the bearing of a trained fighter, and his courtly speech has the hints of nobility, though she recognizes him from no noble house. 

Any amusement in Sansa’s tone when she responds is sharp and ice cold, mocking, instead of the warmth of her shared glance with Brienne. Her lady’s walls are back up, then. Good, Brienne thinks—they have protected her so far, they may still yet protect her. “Pray, tell me the tale, weary travelers, of how you came to lose your way _inside_ of my castle.” 

All of them start at that, and the surprise on the blonde man’s face looks true to Brienne’s eye. But she’d rather trust the Lady Sansa’s judgment on deceit, the younger woman having seen much more of it. “A… castle? We’re… inside of a castle?” 

Sansa is frowning, Brienne can hear it in her voice, and Brienne wants to, though she controls her expression. “You’re in the godswood of Winterfell. Within its walls, if obviously not within the keep itself.” 

There’s no moment of recognition on any of their faces. They look, if anything, more befuddled than before. Brienne tightens her grip on her sword—the certainty of the situation has fallen away. 

“Inside of its walls… Morgana, where in the hell have you brought us?” The blonde man has turned away from them to look at the pale woman with dark hair, radiantly beautiful and obviously courtly. A lady, Brienne had judged her and thinks she judges her still, despite the lack of title, but the pair seem familiar enough that maybe they have no use for formalities. Maybe they are husband and wife, she thinks—a golden warrior and a noble beauty, as it should be. She forces herself not to dwell on it, to keep an eye on the warrior’s sword. 

“I—” The dark-haired woman, Morgana, apparently, blinks. She seems even more confused than the rest of them—she’s swaying on her mount, there’s a tightness around her face that speaks to pain, and her eyes have the glaze of exhaustion there that Brienne recognizes well. The biggest surprise, though, is that with her attention turned, Brienne can notice that the elegant woman is wearing breeches and tunic under her cloak and carrying a sword. It’s another threat, should be what she’s focused on, but she can’t help but feel a moment of connection. They’re rare birds, noble ladies with swords. She hopes that this woman doesn’t prove false. Reminds herself that hope is like the infection of a wound—what kills more than the wound itself. The woman looks around, dismay and confusion warring on her face as she seems to take in what’s around them for the first time, some of the haze clearing. “I don’t know—it stopped, I think I—” Her eyes turn to Brienne, big and round and green, and freeze, widening as her gaze sharpens. “You—it’s you. The lady knight, with a golden sword. I—I saw you. Fighting the dead. It’s here, the dead are coming here, to fight—” 

“You saw—?” Brienne says, at the same time as Lady Sansa steps up beside her with a sharp, “We know.” 

“You know?” the blonde man says, frowning, and glancing over at the dark haired lady. 

“I—I thought we were to warn you, but—it’s all so confusing,” she starts, raising a hand to rub at her temple. Brienne recognizes again the markers of exhaustion and strain, on this one more than on the others, the circles dark under her eyes, the trembling of her hands at the reins. She tries to tamp down on the sympathy it instinctively evokes, at least until the threat is properly evaluated. Sansa is still here, watching this interaction unfold with her mask on and walls up, but Brienne knows that her mind is spinning, a mind honed under the razor-sharp blades of Kings Landing and Littlefinger. 

The dark-skinned woman, silent so far, nudges her horse closer to the lady’s from behind, to murmur, soft enough to be comforting but still loud enough to be heard in the quiet of the godswood, “It’s alright, Morgana. We trust that there must be some reason we’re here, if your visions brought us here. You need to rest, my lady.” 

The blonde man stifles a frown at that. Brienne wishes she had Sansa’s acuity for courtly protocol, for understanding the threads of connection and power between people and things. She did pay attention to her septa’s lessons, but they never stuck in her mind, and she can’t puzzle out the relationship between these four, much less their connection to the Seven Kingdoms. The dark-skinned girl doesn’t speak with an accent, and she’d called the lady both Morgana and her lady. Noble, but familiar? Or maybe the dark-skinned girl is the more important, dressed as she is simply to distract, to draw attention to the beauty in front of her. That would be what Brienne would do, in their place. She tries to imagine a ruse like that with Lady Sansa—trying to pass Sansa’s beauty off as a handmaiden or small folk, dressing Brienne up in fineries, even with her sword. It’s laughable. She envies Morgana, if that’s their ruse, the ability to pass seamlessly through identities, to be a beautiful lady at will and to wield a sword at will. The envy burns hot. 

“Who are you?” She realizes she’s speaking for the first time, tired of these games or just ashamed of her own envy. 

The group exchange another look, and the blonde speaks for them again. “I am… Prince Arthur Pendragon, of Camelot. With me are the Lady Morgana, of Gorlois, my father’s ward, and Guinevere and Merlin.” 

“Camelot?” Brienne exchanges a glance with Sansa, who shakes her head slightly, no recognition sparking in her eyes. Maybe still a ruse, then. There’s no telling who these people are, if they have no reference point to judge them by. 

“Yes, Camelot.” Seeing the lack of understanding, the man—Arthur, a _prince_ allegedly, and he’s certainly self-assured and golden enough, the kind of prince she’d maybe have dreamed about as a girl—tries again, voice sounding less confident with each word. “West of Mercia? Escetir? … Southeast of Gwynedd?” 

The dark-haired man pipes up from beside him. “In… Albion?” 

“How long have you been riding?” the Lady Sansa asks from beside her, sounding very much like she’d rather be asking whether they’ve hit their heads, but there’s no mistaking the fact that their horses look worn and the riders tired, and that none of their scouts sighted any riders making for Winterfell. Brienne misses the feeling she’d had, just minutes ago, that there was certainty in a sword in her hand and someone to protect. These travelers don’t fit neatly into any category she’s yet identified. Maybe it’s only because Jaime has been so much on her mind lately that she’s reminded of him, another person who defies categorization for her, and shortens her temper. 

“Just… overnight,” Arthur says weakly, frowning. Brienne imagines, from the look on his face, that one days’ ride is certainly not long enough to travel outside the borders of the kingdoms he’d mentioned. She trusts Sansa, but this man doesn’t feel like deception. He feels like a man who’s used to being certain, finding out that nothing is certain at all now. It’s a familiar feeling. 

“You—you said you had visions of the army of the dead?” Sansa asks, taking command of the situation. Only Brienne knows what volumes the momentary hesitation in her voice speaks. 

“Yes, Lady…?” The woman, the Lady Morgana, says. 

“Lady Sansa Stark, of Winterfell,” Sansa says, acknowledging Morgana’s nod with one of her own. As if they are two well-bred ladies, met at court or in a dinner hall, rather than in a godswood with swords between them. “Well, if that’s the case, then you’d better speak to my brother Bran.” 

Sansa turns to lead them out of the godswood, steps sure and quick, Brienne shadowing her with her hand resting on the pommel of her sword, fingers creeping over the familiar ridges and bumps making up the lions’ heads, the rubies. She knows it shouldn’t, but it gives her a feeling of soothing, to remember her oaths, to remember the best of Jaime Lannister. She needs the certainty of the simplicity of her oaths, in the face of these travelers and Lady Sansa’s implication of things beyond their understanding, with her mention of her brother, the one who had visions of the army of the dead. The party of travelers fall in behind them, whispering amongst themselves. 

“Oh, and Prince Arthur?” Lady Sansa calls from up ahead. “I hope your title doesn’t mean you’ve come in expectation of a crown, or rank. We have rather an excess of monarchs as it is.” 

The whispering falls silent, then intensifies, before Morgana is the one to reply. “It seems as if there is much about this strange place for us to learn, Lady Sansa Stark of Winterfell.” 

Brienne thinks that the same could be said for the strangers as well.


	3. Merlin I

The two women—because, despite Arthur’s complete ineptitude earlier, they are both women, just one taller than either him or Merlin and a knight, clearly—leave their horses at the stables and then have them take a winding set of passageways, cold and mostly empty, through a stone castle until they reach a remote hallway. The castle is at once completely like the one at Camelot and nothing at all like it. It’s the same in the way that all castles are the same, the stones everywhere, the thick walls, the easily defensible layout. But this castle feels cold from its walls out, not just from the winter in; large parts seem silent and haunted, and the walls themselves look as if they’ve seen evidence of fighting and destruction in recent memory. There are few tapestries or giggling pairs of servants, no guards ranging the hallways. It feels half a crypt. The door at the end of the hall swings open to reveal the room spare, nearly empty except for a bed, a table with a handful of chairs, both looking more old than antique, a raging fire set in an enormous hearth, and a young man, wrapped in furs, sitting in a wheeled chair that Merlin recognizes vaguely from an illustration in one of Gaius’ medical texts as a way to aid those who have lost the use of their legs. 

“My brother, Brandon Stark,” the red-haired lady says. The lady had said this was her castle, but doesn’t introduce her brother with any lordly titles. Merlin bows anyway, because he’d rather show more deference than necessary than too little, but it feels like yet another puzzle piece to add to the jumble they’ve already collected. Since Morgana woke him in the night, with her eyes strange and whispers of urgency, of a threat to Arthur, a threat to them all, and their half-mad flight through the forest, all of them confused except for Morgana, who’d seemed somehow both focused and lost, it’s been nothing but confusion. They’d ridden from the beginning of a mild spring in the Valley of the Kings into a wood full of fog and strange sounds in the dead of winter, and found only confusion and distrust from their hosts, a resigned and hesitant knowledge of the impossible threat that Morgana had warned them of. And now this brother of a lady who is not a lord—Merlin hopes that the answer isn’t that they took his title from him when he lost the use of his legs. He wants to like these people, and he won’t like them if that’s the truth. 

“I am no longer Brandon Stark. I am the three-eyed raven,” the man says, and Merlin shivers at the feel of magic in his words. His magic has always felt warm—like sunshine on a spring day, welcoming and leaping at his touch like an urgently babbling brook. Even when he spoke the Dragon tongue to Kilgarrah, that had felt like fire—old fire, ancient and unknown, but fire. The magic that this man speaks feels like ice, ice so cold it burns, and he has to fight to avoid flinching from it. From the way Morgana sways, she can feel it too, but Gwen steps forward to touch her elbow lightly, and she steadies. _Morgana, where have you brought us? Worse, what have you brought us to?_

Merlin watches the lady’s—Sansa’s—lips thin slightly. If she didn’t execute them on the spot for all Morgana’s talk of visions and an army of the dead, and instead brought them to her brother, then magic must not be illegal here, if not commonplace, despite the sister’s distaste. No, not distaste, discomfort. The brother doesn’t feel like a sorcerer. He barely feels human, when Merlin reaches out with his magic to try to sense him. Merlin supposes that he’d maybe feel distaste, too, if he’d once had a brother, and then, like the boy said, the brother became no longer his brother, but this hollow-stared thing of magic, ancient and cold. 

As soon as Merlin directs his magic to feel him, the man’s vacant gaze snaps to Merlin, suddenly no longer hollow but sharp and penetrating, as if he’s looking at Merlin’s very soul and judging. Merlin’s caught in the man’s gaze, until he sees, out of his periphery, Arthur ever-so-casually shift his body further in front of Merlin’s. In some ways, it’s nice, having Arthur’s protection, but until Merlin can find a way to surreptitiously tell him that he thinks the boy in the wheeled chair might be powerful enough to obliterate them all with a thought, Arthur just looks like he’s ready to protect Merlin from a cripple. It speaks to how unsettling the boy is, with his heavy voice and his strange stare, that even an entirely nonmagical idiot like Arthur can see the threat. 

“They arrived in the godswood,” the Lady Sansa is continuing, immune to the threads of magic and tension in the air, “on horseback, after a day’s ride. They said they were from Camelot, which I’ve never heard of, but.. the Lady Morgana had visions of the Night King’s army marching here, fighting here. You… followed your visions here?” 

Morgana nods, eyes fixed grimly on the man in the chair, fighting a quiver in her lip. He wishes he could tell her that he feels it too, that it’s alright, that she’s not alone, but—not here, not now. In Camelot, he couldn’t possibly tell her, but right now she looks more fragile and scared than he’d ever seen before, even after the worst of her visions woke her screaming in the night. Maybe here, it’d be okay to tell Morgana she’s not alone. Everything feels different here. 

“I haven’t seen them before,” the man says, in a way that Merlin recognizes means more than just that they’ve never crossed paths, “but the godswood is the place of the Old Gods. There is more power there than even I know.” 

“The Old Gods?” Merlin says it without thinking, feeling heat rush to his cheeks as all eyes turn to him—the Starks’ and the knight’s, curious, Gwen and Morgana’s just startled, and Arthur’s reproachful and a bit… afraid? “I just… what if the Old Gods are connected to the Old Religion?” he stammers, focusing on only meeting Morgana’s eyes, trying to will reassurance at her. “It’s… the way magic used to be practiced in Camelot. Anyone could, but there were… priestesses, of the Old Religion. We… don’t know much about it, but… maybe that’s the link?” 

“Anyone can practice magic in your lands?” Sansa asks, a note of wariness in her voice that wasn’t there before. So maybe there’s less love for magic here than Merlin had at first thought, despite the fact that her brother is clearly a powerful seer. Or maybe just rarer. 

“No! No, uh, magic is—magic is banned, in Camelot,” Merlin stammers, gaze darting between Morgana and Sansa. Morgana’s eyes are wide, somewhere between fear and hope and despair. “But… only when Arthur’s father came to power. It used to be more common. Like I said, we don’t know much about it. Just what we’ve heard. And now, Morgana has had… visions.”

“I don’t understand them, I can’t control them, I didn’t—I didn’t _learn_ them or practice magic. It just… is,” Morgana says, a pleading note in her voice as she looks between Sansa, Brandon and Arthur. “I don’t know why we’re here, I just—I saw a dreadful battle, an army of dead, snow and night everywhere, unending. I saw fighting. I saw dragons. I—I thought we were to warn you, but I think we’re supposed to help you? I’ve never—I always just _see_ , but this time it was like I was in… a trance. It felt like we needed to be here.” 

The man’s focus is on Morgana, but at her mention of dragons, his eyes flicker to Merlin again, and Merlin has the uncomfortable feeling of being seen. 

“I believe you,” Sansa says, stepping forward and laying a comforting hand on Morgana’s shoulder. There’s something in her demeanor that Merlin still doesn’t completely trust, reminds him of Uther’s oldest and most powerful advisors, the ones who seem to always come out on top and to never be completely genuine, but she does seem to be trying to comfort Morgana, and the squeeze of her hand seems earnest. “I… I wouldn’t have believed you even a fortnight ago, but… I’ve seen the truth of Bran’s visions. I’ve seen the dead. I’ve seen dragons. I don’t understand why you’re here, and I don’t yet trust you, but I believe you.” 

Morgana visibly relaxes, eyes glistening with unshed tears of relief, to be heard, to be believed, to be among people who might understand her. Guilt pierces Merlin like a knife, and the boy’s eyes slide to Merlin as if he knows it. 

“What are we going to do with them, my lady?” the tall woman asks, and Merlin swallows heavily, wondering where this conversation will lead. There’s still so much they don’t know, and he’s not sure that he can even manage to get them out of the castle and back into the woods they’d come from, at least not without revealing his magic. He’s less sure that he could find the way back to Camelot, the mysterious fog Morgana had led them through that had seemed to shift their surroundings—through places, through worlds. 

“Do with us? We’re going to help you fight, of course,” Arthur says. Beautiful, headstrong, idiotic Arthur, Merlin thinks helplessly. 

“Of course?” Sansa says, turning to him with an appraising eye. “The Night King’s army may be the greatest of our problems right now, but it’s hardly the only one. Things are in a delicate enough state as it is, between all the armies gathered here, and the magical arrival of a prince, his seer”—Merlin stifles an incredibly inappropriately-timed laugh at the twin expressions of horror on both Morgana and Arthur’s faces at Morgana being called _Arthur’s_ anything—“and their retinue”—and, okay, Merlin had hoped to rank a little higher than _retinue_ , and when he trades a glance with Gwen one of her eyebrows is raised slightly—“will certainly complicate them.” 

“We’ve told you quite a bit about what’s going on with us. Maybe you could do the same?” Merlin says, maybe a tad more bristly than he needed to be, talking to a noble lady, but she _had_ referred to him as just retinue. 

Sansa exchanges a glance with the knight, their unspoken conversation revealing volumes about their long acquaintance, and then the knight nods. “I’m sure you must be famished after your long travels. Lady Brienne will get someone to fetch some breakfast, to be brought here, and I’ll explain certain things to you.”


End file.
